Fly Away Peter Summary

This essay sample on Fly Away Peter Summary provides all necessary basic information on this matter, including the most common “for and against” arguments. Below are the introduction, body and conclusion parts of this essay.

There are many pushing factors in the book “fly away peter” that push the main character “Jim” to enlist in the army and leave the sanctuary that he loves and go fight in World War I. Although there are obvious factors that push Jim into enlisting there are also many subtle parts of the book that open his mind to the option of war.

Jim is mainly affected by his widening of perspective and all the small and large pushing factors are slowly widening his perspective and allowing him to move on and continue to widen his view upon the world and Jim chooses to broaden his views by enlisting.

Jim’s first experience (in the timeline of the book) that begins to widen his perspective is his meeting with Imogen, seeing her picture of the sandpiper and listening to her explain the migration of birds “they come down from the north, you know, and winter among us.

In Norfolk, I mean. ” (pg 27 lines 1-3). This is the start of Jim’s broadening of perspective and it is what starts to make way for Jim’s experiences to push him to enlistment.

The migration of birds is amazing for Jim because it reveals to him that his sanctuary is not the only place for these birds to live and that they are able to cross vast distances and make it back here on the right day at the exact same tree on the exact same branch.

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This information allows Jim to start thinking past the sanctuary. Shortly following Jim’s discovery of Imogin Jim is sent into Brisbane to collect items that Jim and Imogin need. Jim begins another experience that it truly the one that brings the idea of enlistment to the front of his head.

Fly Away Peter Essay

This experience is in the Criterion (a pub) in the ladies’ lounge in Brisbane where he meets a lady called Connie. Jim and Connie start talking under the pretence that Jim is leaving for war “Are you joining up too? ” (page 39 line 8) this boosts along Jim’s thoughts about war. “They got talking, and on the assumption that he too was off to the other side of the world and would need something to remember before he went. ” Jim is taken over to Connie’s house but while he is going over all that he can think about is the violence going on behind him.

This opens Jim’s eyes to how the conflict at home relates to that on the other side of the world. This encounter being under the pretence of Jim going to war allows Jim’s mind to wonder about himself being a soldier and how this experience would be if he really was going of to war. As the book progresses is Jim’s experience in the air changes how he perceives the sanctuary and is a massive factor in Jim’s enlistment. Before the flight Jim believes he has no interest in new sights “new views of things didn’t interest him. (page 51 line 7)

And relieves that he has a blood fear of leaving the ground. Jim already has a map in his head of the sanctuary and once he is up in the air he can see all the pieces of his map revealed and placed together. He realises that he is seeing things just as the migrating birds would see them. This fact allows him to throw off his fear of the ground and open his mind to the whole world, he starts to wonder what the bird see when they are in Europe.

This experience to Jim is extremely powerful as it; shows that Jim is interested in widening his perspective and seeing new things, and allows Jim to put the Sanctuary into perspective and place an image of the whole place allowing it to become a part of his life and not his whole life as it was. This allows him to move beyond the sanctuary and onto its opposite, war. Along with Jim’s experiences that push him towards enlistment there is also his father that plays a factor In Jim leaving for Europe.

Jim has never been intone with his father and when he talks with his dad about the war Jim makes up his mind that he would go to war. Jim always wished not to be like his father and when his dad says “I’d go meself. ” (page 56 line11) Jim knows that his father would never do this and “Jim felt the ground tilting, as he had felt it that first day in Brisbane, to the place where the war was, and felt the drag upon hi f all those deaths. ” (page 56 lines 17-20).

Jim makes the connection from this experience to his one in Brisbane (that allowed him to consider leaving). “Later he was to think of that view from Bert’s plane as his last version of the world he knew, and of their momentarily losing sight of it when they turned to come down as the moment when he knew, quite certainly, that he would go. ” (page 56 lines 23-27). These lines show that Jim is able to momentarily forget about the sanctuary and relate his experience in the air to leaving the country.

Jim makes his decision to leave in a single moment, it almost seems like he detaches himself from the sanctuary in that moment and allows himself to move onward. Although Jim’s father starts off this sequence he also starts another series that made Jim see his past and his future in one moment ” His father had got sentimental at the last. He had given Jim five quid and tried, as if he were still a child, to put his hand on the back of his neck, which was newly raw from the barber.

It had made Jim, for a moment, see things differently, as if a line had been drawn between the past and what was to come, the two parts of his life, and he could look at all that other side clearly now that he was about to leave it. ” (page 58 lines 8-16). Jim’s father is a massive factor in Jim’s enlistment and all through the book Jim’s massive decision had only came about while his father was around. All these factor that have been mentioned are all pushing Jim to expand his view on the world and open his mind.

With Imogin Jim starts to open his mind and think about the birds journey and When he leaves to Brisbane Jim’s perspective continues to widen and starts his thinking on over the war. The experience on the plane shows that Jim has interest in new sights and this experience allows him to move beyond the sanctuary. Finally is Jim’s father who allows Jim to make up his mind on going to war. This book is full of factors that widen Jim’s perspective and the ones I chose in this essay I believe help Jim both in obvious ways but also subtly help him make up his mind.